Eight Charged With Auto Insurance Fraud

Researchers from the auto insurance fraud task force in Lawrence, Mass., say the participants allegedly set up false failures by Leon Lopez usually felt safe.

But the two cars' crash papers "at the intersection of Route 125 and Interstate 495 south near Haverhill, Mass., and Plaistow line on 15 July 2002, is the latest in the case against Lopez.

He faces auto insurance fraud charges along with seven other people, who received a fake treatment of injuries.

"With Leo Lopez, it was probably easier to convince the passengers and drivers to be involved rare, because there was no threat of injury," Lawrence police Detective list. Michael Simard said.

"Most incidents were orchestrated it on paper. So it has not been any incidents at the stage where people could get hurt," said Simard, the lead investigator in the department of the Task Force.

Lopez, 28, 69 Abbott St. Lawrence, was already facing three separate jury indictment, when re-arrested.

Seven people are charged along with Lopez were treated at Kaplan or Haverhill Family Chiropractic.

Operators of these clinics - Michael Kaplan, in Hampstead and Troy L. wheeler, 40, in Amesbury, Mass. - were indicted along with Lopez at the beginning of this year as part of a grand jury investigation initiated by the state Attorney General's Office.

This case brings to 341 the number of people accused of fraud in auto insurance Lawrence five years of oppression.

Lopez is to be retried later this month in the case being prosecuted by the state Attorney General's Office after Superior Court jury could not reach a verdict a few weeks ago.

"Leo Lopez is the most notorious, the most cynical and most prolific of the runners tested by us," Simard said of the former Haverhill man. Investigators identified him as a "major player", which is paid by area lawyers and chiropractors to recruit victims of fraudulent accidents in the home, that the cost insurers millions of dollars a year in Lawrence.

Lopez, a former van driver and chiropractic assistant for Kaplan Chiropractic Corp. on Sutton Street in North Andover, is considered the key at least a dozen accidents are probed by the task force, according to investigators.

"His name surfaces a lot in our investigations on the number of accidents," said Chief of Police Lawrence John Romero, who assembled a task force in the autumn of 2003 when 65-year-old Lawrence great-grandmother died in a staged plane crash, a car that investigators said she helped plan defraud insurance companies.

"It seems that he made a career this way, this guy was a big-time runner. Runners in general are large sums of money on the backs of the residents of Lawrence choreographing by the fraud," said Romero.

Criminal charges result from the probe initiated by the Bureau of Anti-Fraud Insurance Massachusetts, which has several researchers working in a handful of Lawrence police detectives on the task force.

The aunt of Lopez's wife - Elsa Salazar, 37, 67 Franklin St., Lawrence - confessed police to arrest her after that disaster does not happen.

Salazar initially claimed that a 1989 Acura drove to the 1997 Plymouth at the rear made for a rapid end to the other cars. She told investigators she signed a false accident report prepared by Lopez as a favor to him, and also to make some money.

Investigators also received a statement from the Acura owner, who has not been charged. Lopez told police he paid 700 U.S. dollars for using his car registration in order to create misleading information.

Also for auto insurance fraud were:

José de la Cruz, 35, 13 Melrose Ave. Lawrence, a driver from Plymouth. He says that his car was rear ended and denied any wrongdoing.

Adrian Matos, 33, 26 Inman St., a passenger in Plymouth. She denied any wrongdoing.

Violeta de la Cruz, 38, 102 Chester St. Lawrence, a passenger in Plymouth. She denied any wrongdoing.

Isidro Royer, 43, formerly Lawrence, a passenger in Plymouth. He is still wanted by the police, who believe he lives in Florida.

Candida Santiago, 55, formerly Lawrence, a passenger in the Acura. She remains at large and is considered to be living in New Jersey,

Angie Abrams, 36, formerly Lawrence, a passenger in the Acura. I believe that the police living in Florida

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